From Seeking Alpha:
Amazon is aggressively pursuing market share growth in mobile payments. WSJ reports that Amazon is asking gas stations and restaurants to offer Amazon Pay options to customers. Amazon also will be increasing the presence in brick and mortar stores with whom it does not directly compete for retail sales. On the other hand, Apple also is looking to gain a decisive market share for its own digital wallet platform.
A recent Bloomberg report mentioned that Apple Pay is in second position, behind PayPal in number of active users using the digital wallet. However, Amazon has a significant benefit due to its online retail business, Prime membership and further growth in the brick and mortar space. Amazon also is investing heavily to increase the market share of Amazon Pay in international regions. As the mobile payments market matures, we should see two or three major players grabbing a big chunk of the market share.
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Amazon Pay has been around since 2007. However, Amazon has only recently started making aggressive investments to increase the market share of its digital wallet. It’s now asking brick and mortar stores with whom it does not compete to allow Amazon Pay options for customers. It’s not clear whether Amazon Pay will use QR codes or NFC technology which is used by Apple Pay. QR codes are generally preferred by smaller business owners as they can print and tape the codes without any big investments in NFC terminals.
Link to the rest a Seeking Alpha
Every time I read an article about these phone-based payment systems I have trouble thinking of a reason I would want to use one. Perhaps there’s some security benefit I’m missing but strictly on the basis of convenience I don’t see how they have an advantage over using my plain old credit card.